This blog is really just to complete our Vietnam journey as we are currently in Kuala Lumpur for one night before heading across to Borneo tomorrow morning. Our last few days in Vietnam were spent in Halong Bay, on a boat cruising the amazing islands. We then spent one final day in hectic Hanoi-a chance to buy all the last minute souvieners that at first we thought were unnecessary, but on leaving the 'Nam we had decided they were essential buys!!

Halong Bay was a fantastic place, so vast and beautiful and I think we only saw a very small section of it. We set out on our trip with about 15 other tourists, and we were all filed and shifted along the busy Halong Habour to our designated boat, very much feeling like just another tourist and certainly far different from our experience in Sapa. However on the boat it was fine. We had a cool little cabin to ourselves and once we got going you soon forgot about all the other boats heading in the same direction, or sometimes straight at you (!), and just enjoyed the scenery. Our first stop were some caves that were apparently discovered in 1993 (!???! Our tour guide's English wasn't the best and I am yet to Wikipeadia this fact to find out if this was the right date!) They were pretty cool, though lit up a bit like a Disney Land ride and strangly occupied by loads of penguin bins! (No need for Wiki here...there are definately no real penguins in Halong Bay so their inclusion here was a bit odd).

The evening was spent with a relaxing kayak around a small bay and outling islands while the sun went down.......Hmmmm! Well, it started out that way. Dan and I paddled a bit to get away from the crowds and found ourselves circumnavigating a small island in front of the anchored boat. The small island however continued to grow the more and more we followed it around. After 45 mins, and when we should have returned our kayaks, we decided that in fact our island could quite possibly be quite a LARGE island and it was best we turned around and headed back (we were also running the risk of getting stuck in a fishing net as we seemed to have paddled ourselves into a local floating village). As the sun went down fairly quickly we paddled ourselves very quickly back around the way we came and to the safety of the boat. Biceps pumping and sweating like a loonatic we got back in just under 15 mins! I felt I definately deserved a beer that night so we enjoyed a couple in the company of new friends who all seemed to have found our kayak tale funny, although no one had noticed we were gone so long!

The next day (arms aching excessively) we headed to Cat Ba island and to part of the National Park to climb a little mountain. Dan and I thought we were ever so clever by leaving our main rucksacks in Hanoi and only having small bags on the boat, but this also meant we only had flipflops to climb what turned out to be quite a slippery steep slope! Nevermind, we made it unscaved to the top where we got to climb up a rickety, rusty old watch tower to "enjoy" the views. As you can see from the photos there is a sheer look of terror in my eyes as this thing was dodgy and I cant say I "enjoyed" the views at all....I was happy back on the ground thankyou very much, to enjoy my equally slippery decent in my now quite slippery flipflops! In the afternoon we took a smaller boat across to Monkey Island, a smaller island away from Cat Ba inhabited by a troop of monkeys known to terrorise tourists and cause general mayhem. However when we were there they seemed pretty tame and we took a lovely (though again a pretty steep and again in flipflops) hike to the other side of the island to a deserted beach to enjoy the evening sun.

The next day we headed back to Hanoi and to the end of our Vietnam leg of the trip. We have both enjoyed 'Nam loads for loads of different reasons. The country is vastly different in terrain, scenery and climate and yet Vietnam all over is a feeling of optimism and hope. I suppose when a country has been through so much for so many years it can do one of two things, either continue to dwell over what has been or move on and work for a better future. Thankfully Vietnam has done the latter and therefore makes it a great country to visit and experience.

So....bring on Borneo! We only have a week there but already have some exciting things planned to pack into our short stay. All will be revealed on the next blog.

Lots of Love, TTFN

Rhan
x
p.s. Dan has not writen the blog this time due to a severe case of writers block. He is hoping to make a full recovery by the time the next blog is due.